A Message from the ECEA Chair:Erin Miller​​At our last ECEA board/committee chair/officer meeting, we each spent one minute sharing what we are doing that makes us tick right now. I wish everyone could have joined the meeting for just those fifteen minutes. The group shared stories about culturally responsive teaching pedagogies in Early Childhood classrooms, cutting-edge scholarship, national and international journal editorships, anti-racist curricula development for teacher education programs and most importantly, we shared personal stories about the young learners in our own lives. Undeniable in all of our many stories was an underlying belief that critical Early Childhood education is about working with our nation’s youngest children and their families and teachers to raise a different, better generation of people. That is what being a part of the ECEA is all about, why this space has been my professional home since its inception, and why I am charged up about being the new chair of the ECEA.

To begin to describe the energy and opportunities in this group – from teacher scholarships, awards, publications, a first-rate website, an anti-racist consultants network, resources for Social Justice and Anti-Bias teaching, a Day of Early Childhood program at NCTE that boasts THE most critical and important work being done in Early Childhood Education, a growing and thriving membership, a vision for a unique space at NCTE and beyond – would not be possible. You would have to see it and feel it to believe it…

​…which is why I invite you to be a part of us. As a starting point, join us this November at NCTE in Atlanta. The Day of Early Childhood won’t disappoint. Already, we have a program in the works that will amaze and excite you. Come to our business meeting and reception (known as being one of the most fun receptions on the block). Introduce yourselves. Check out our website. Follow us on Facebook. Join a committee. Nominate yourself for a leadership role in our assembly. We are a young assembly but don’t you mind, we have a strong vision for what we want to become. On behalf of the ECEA, I extend a warm welcome to you to join us.

Early Childhood Education Assembly Response to the Orlando Shootings and the Anniversary of the Mother Emmanuel Church Murders

Join Early Childhood Educators Across the Country To Affect Change in Schools Now!

On June 12, 2016, 49 people were murdered and over 50 wounded in a nightclub in Orlando, Florida. One year earlier, on June 17, 2015, nine people were murdered in Mother Emmanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina. One killer targeted members of the LGTBQIA (Lesbian, Gay, Transgender, Bisexual, Queer, Intersex, Asexual) community, many of them Latina/o. The other targeted African Americans. Both were acts of terrorism. Because the Orlando shooter was Muslim, much vitriol was directed toward the entire Muslim community. The Charleston shooter, a professed Christian, prompted no massive discrimination against Christians. Nurtured by anti-LGBTQIA bias and racism, these hate crimes are not anomalies. These acts and the Islamaphobic virtriol that followed the Orlando shooting represent a vivid history of violence and hatred directed against LGBTQIA, Latina/o, African American, and Muslim people within and beyond the United States.

The Early Childhood Education Assembly (ECEA) believes that it is long past time for schools to take a visible and vocal stand against the beliefs that breed these atrocitiesas well as the more insidious cruelties that occur in our schools every day: the psychological anguish children experience when they feel they must hide their two moms or two dads, their sexual orientation, their explorations of gender identification, their faith, home culture, and languages. This anguish builds when children see no normalized validation of themselves or their families and heritage in school curriculum and materials and as they see their families and communities dismissed, degraded and dehumanized in hallway talk, playground slurs, and uninterrupted discriminatory practices. This is exacerbated when the curriculum has no foundation in teaching children to identify injustices and learn strategies for speaking back to them. (read more...)